There is a natural selection in motorcycling.
Consider the kickstart lever of the 850 Norton. Some nine inches in length the
lever demands real muscle or weigh to swing it through its arc. Those who can'
drop the lever down smartly, or those who don't want to learn, or those who don'
want to he bothered—they all will pass less formidable motorcycles. It's a
peculiar process of natural selection. Under achievers may want a Norton, but
find themselves unequal to the starting task You may choose it, but bikes like
the Norton must also choose you.

Understand that the Norton 850 is al elitist's
motorcycle. For he who had learned the drill, the Norton will rumble into life
with a single well-coordinated swipe. The Norton man shrugs off effete electric
starters and invites his quarrel some friends to demonstrate their expertise at
the lever. Most likely they'll turn pasty under a nice moist sheen of
perspiration without bringing the engine to life. There's a secret. Being a good
Norton man is like being a magician: the magic is a few well-rehearsed drills.
Learn the routine and proceed to center stage.

The John Player Special is the most elite Norton
of all, and it takes a little extra knowledge, like the ignition key trick. The
starting procedure begins at first with a frustrating attempt to insert the
ignition key into its slot. The standard Norton switch nearly fouls the trailing
edge of the fiberglass cowling. You can't see the slot which is protected by a
rubber cover, and initially you can't quite remember which way the key's
toothing should point. But after you've fumbled your way through a few times,
you learn the trick. You know where the slot is, and how to hold the ignition
key in your left hand between your thumb, index and middle fingers. The key
slips right in. You can do it—because you must do it—blind. Of course it's a
dumb place to have the switch. But when did you see a magician with all his
cards up front?

Tickle the 32mm Amals carefully. One must top up
the float chambers without gushing them over. Fold the right footpeg up. The
kickstarter moves the Norton's two 77mm pistons slowly through their 89mm
strokes. Bring the engine up past compression on one cylinder. Use the clutch to
free the kickstart lever and position the cranking arm at 10:30. With the bike
on its centerstand (or on its wheels, if you're the confident type) smoothly
rise up, roll your weight over on your right leg, lock your knee, roll your eyes
to heaven and drop the lever down.

Unless the engine is hot, the lever won't exactly
plummet. On a chill day, when the oil is thick and the engine cold, the
kickstarter descends more with an ooze than a swish. On such occasions use the
choke and count on three or four cranks. When the Norton's warm, one stab will
suffice. It's all in the sorcerer's handbook.

The John Player Norton has a certain illusionary
character. It's the namesake of the Norton factory bikes which race under the
banner of the John Player Tobacco Company. What's in a namesake? Not a
production-racer replica of anything, the Player bike is a standard Commando
dressed up in race-track clothes. The outfit has come from the same tailors who
created the John Player Norton F750 racers, so the style and cut follow an
intentional pattern. The upper part of the JPS fairing mocks the F750 racer,
though the street Player has two huge eye sockets for headlamps. The street
fairing is a three-quarters midi, a style which no doubt will become fashionable
just as soon as the back-street entrepreneurs begin to build molds off the
Norton's Avon fiberglass. To complete the racer-image, the JPS sports a
high-back monoposto seat, clip-ons, rear sets, black exhaust system, and a tank
canopy.

Tank canopy? Yes, the real steel gas tank hides
under the spreading fiberglass cover. At its lower reaches the canopy-cowling
flares out and meets the fairing, connecting up with four Dzus fasteners on each
side. Fiberglass tanks are now illegal for road-going motorcycles in England.
Nevertheless, Norton didn't want the JPS bike to lose its racer-image, hence the
thin fiberglass canopy over a steel gas tank. Does it offend your sense of
race-crafting? Where, you might ask, is a strictly functional lightweight
aluminum gas tank? Where indeed. Most likely such an idea got trapped at a
deadly juncture—between two sheets in a cost accountant's ledger. So the JPS's
racer-looks are literally gel-coat deep.

Hmmmm, you ask, if the bike has no more poke than
the standard 850, and if it's just another pretty fiberglass face hung on a dear
old girl. is the John Player deal all a steam-blowing shuck? Quite to the
contrary. The street Player is refreshingly and beguilingly honest.

No one at Norton is shouting "production racer."
Nobody is claiming that you'll get a piece of Peter Williams, or a section of
Parliament Square, or even an odd chunk of the Isle of Man. The JPS has no extra
power, no special speed, no monocoque frame, no trick gearbox. It's zip-zero-zip
for a straight-up reason. The basic 850 Norton Commando is the end product of a
British system of development and refinement. That means the basic Commando is
both the factory's best, and only, Norton. If the John Player Café-racer had
trick ignition, a special gearbox, high-compression pistons, and high-rpm
camshaft (specialitis ad nauseum ergo undo), Norton would be selling something
considerably less than its best motorcycle. Better that Norton's Café customers
have flashy John Player glasswork and a good Commando than flashy John Player
glasswork and a basket of incipient shrapnel under the cowling.

Lift off the tank cowling and you'll find a
modified Commando Roadster gas tank with foam rubber squares gracing its surface
at strategic points. The treatment prevents the shroud from rattling about on
the steel tank. This vessel, which even a polite Anglophile would label "cobby,"
holds 3.2 gallons. That's a bit more than the standard Commando Roadster (3.0
gallons) and far less generous than the Interstate Commando (6 gallons).

The JPS shows some rearranging immediately behind
the engine. There's a new air filter box, a large molded plastic container with
air intake scoops on the bottom and a wet foam filter inside. The new airbox
really hushes down the intake noise of the big vertical twin. The larger airbox
has forced other components behind the engine into another formation. The
battery on the Café-racer has been rotated 90 degrees so that it mounts
transversely (that is, the long sides of the battery go across the bike).

The new intake plumbing is part of the so-called
Mark 2A sound-control system. The 2A specification also includes giant mufflers.
Although the ends of the silencers appear to be sealed, the exhaust actually
escapes around the circumferences of the end plugs. The 2A hardware has already
been marketed in Europe where Germany and Sweden have the toughest noise-control
laws. The whispering John Player bike sneaked past Cycle's decibel meter with an
80 db (A) reading. Credit for the new-found silence is shared by the effective
intake and exhaust systems and by the fairing and cowling which contain
upper-end engine noise.

The seat has normal padding by Café-racer
standards. Judged on a touring scale, the seat would get high marks for misery.
Two snaps at the top of the tail section permit access to the compartment behind
the padding. This must be Norton's version of the Yamaha Cycle Camper—there's an
enormous amount of room.

Up front the Avon midi-fairing dominates the
motorcycle with its two six-inch headlamps. In order to provide sufficient
energy for the dual lamps, Norton has fitted the JPS with a high-output
alternator. In certain cases, the double headlights work better than the best
single lamps. For example, the double lights are excellent for straight-line
Interstate driving. But for night-time riding on winding roads, they're not
significantly better than the Kawasaki's Z-1 headlight.

Above and behind the headlights, the fairing has
a handsome instrument deck which carries the tachometer, speedometer (which
strangely lacks a tripmeter) and the indicator lights for ignition, signals and
high beam. The fairing interior and deck are finished in a matte black.
Customers better love the way the John Player bike looks, because the fairing
(though attached by a U-bolt. bracket, and stays) is an • integral part of the
bike's concept. One can't just subtract the fairing and find ready solutions for
instrument and headlight remounting. And without the fairing, the tank cowling
would have no anchors. Dispensable the midi isn't—but vulnerable it is.

Street Player owners will undoubtedly exercise
some riding caution just to protect the beautiful lightweight Avon fiberglass.
We would advise care. During a photo session, we propped the JPS away from a
wall of background paper with a 12-inch ruler. The ruler slipped out of place
and the bike fell against the wall. The thin fiberglass surrounding the clip-ons
fortunately distorted on impact and did not break. In fact, the blow didn't put
any cracks in the gel-coat of the glass. However, the right-side mirror, which
bolts directly into the fairing, punched a hole through the glass around the
mirror's mounting boss. You can't have a fiberglass fairing which is light and
resiliant (within limits) and still highly resistant to pinpoint blows. The
Player Norton fairing will absorb minor blunted assaults which would crack thick
fiberglass. But in any real sky/ground/Dear Lord/sky/ground episode, no
fiberglass is tough or resilient enough to survive intact. A street Player will
likely endure a minor fracas in its garage. But if you ditch it with enthusiasm
somewhere, draw your money-gun and start shooting.

Minor surface scratches in the color-impregnated
gel-coats can be rubbed out with a careful balance of elbow grease and polishing
compound. You'll not be running off to your local hardware store for touch-up
paint. The red and blue stripes aren't paint either: the colors are pre-cut
sections of pressure-sensitive tape. Ditto for the seat decor. There's good
reason for using tape. Most paint dries very brittle, and it would flake and
crack off the fiberglass surfaces of the bike.

Any cracks in the gel-coat surface show up more
in light colors than dark ones. Some cracking developed in the tank cowling
which is so thin and lightweight (five pounds) that it's very bendable.
Nevertheless, the Avon glasswork is almost flawless; it's in a different league
from most other factory-supplied fiberglass which we've seen. By comparison,
Italian glass looks like it was laid up in a brown paper bag.

For short periods the Norton engine reminds its
rider that he's aboard a big displacement vertical twin. The Isolastic system
allows the 850 engine to shake the entire motorcycle below 2500 rpm. The shaking
ranges from very little to severe. At 1800 rpm, for example, the engine
vibration reaches exactly the correct amplitude and frequency to rattle the JPS
with amazing ferocity, and white fiberglass becomes a ghostly blur.

The street Player did not quake so fiercely as
the 850 Commando which Cycle tested in July 1973. That bike had a set of
round-town troubles. When it was set up to idle nicely, the 1973 bike would
stagger and stall off-idle. To eliminate stalling, the Amal curbs were
calibrated for an unhappy 1200-rpm idle. To avoid the shaking range on the 1973
bike (idle to 3000 rpm), staffers used second gear in fast city-type traffic
where muffler noise proved embarrassingly loud.

The Player Norton is a real turn-about. It
becomes smooth at 2500 rpm. Thus the JPS has a broader, more useable power-band.
The Player is geared a little shorter than earlier 850s (20-tooth gearbox
sprocket instead of 21- or 22-cogs), making both second and third gears workable
for 30-45 mph city traffic. And the JPS had the best Amal carburetors that Cycle
has tried in a long time. Norton now uses its own special carb needles. The
engine chugs softly at its idle speed of 900 rpm. Sometimes there's a tiny hint
of a glitch and a fleeting trace of hesitation right off idle, but compared to
other Amals the set on the JPS was a near revelation. Kick-starting at the
stoplight, like rowdy Norton mufflers, appears to be history. In city traffic,
the JPS behaved as unobtrusively as Casper the Ghost.

On the open road, the Norton's silence remains
impressive. The bike almost radiates a BMW R90S character. In part the silence
creates that impression, but it's also in the easy gait of the engine, the
torquey punch which a throttle roll-on produces, and the remarkable smoothness
above 2500 rpm. The Isolastic buffer system allows the engine—and transmission
and swinging arm—to vibrate in a sub-section isolated from the rider and the
main running gear. At some intervals up the rpm band, such as 3000 rpm, the
rider can feel some faint trembling through the footpegs and seat, but nothing
severe enough to call bothersome. Furthermore, as the brand new (and tight) 850
engine bedded in. the exact rpm-points of the tremors shifted around a bit.

Hooking down a winding road is probably the most
pleasant thing you can do with the JPS. Assuming you're willing to lean on the
55-mph limit, and assuming you haven't picked a knotty road with tight, vicious
corners, then you can click the Player into fourth and proceed with a sense of
calm grace. The bike feels light and agile and precise, something like a big
road-going single. The Norton's agility and the TT100 tires give the rider a
confident feeling. The bike suggests that a rider could change his mind in a
corner should his line intersect with a suddenly-discovered rock on the road.

The Player lacks the cornering clearance for
moderate (side- and centerstand left-side) to proper (right-side pipes) heroics.
Especially swinging left, you wouldn't want to bore into a corner too hot—and
have to crank the bike over harder to stay on the road. In that situation you
might have to trust both the macadam and dirt capabilities of TT100 Dunlops. JPS
owners should do themselves a favor: remove the whole sidestand assembly and
file off a corner of the centerstand. That still leaves the pipes, but most
riders might well be approaching the tape-and-bandage state of public highway
riding when they start grinding flat spots in the pipes and mufflers.

Café racers are never really comfortable: there
are simply levels of pain or its absence. Riding positions are particularly
critical. Dimensions that fall an inch short, for example, may spoil a touring
machine's riding comfort while an inch's error can make a Café racer all but
unbearable. Furthermore, what fits a rider who is five-ten and 160 pounds may
put a six-foot 185-pound rider in sheer agony. Even two people who are the same
height and weight may disagree about the "bearability" of the same motorcycle.
Differences in arm, leg and torso measurements can result in far different
judgments about comfort. Anyone who buys a Café racer should expect to do some
individual tailoring.

Cycle's larger staffers felt both stretched and
cramped on the JPS. The bars were too far from the saddle, and the stretch
produced sore arm and neck muscles after an hour in the saddle. Most American
riders would probably welcome clip-ons which could he located about three inches
higher and two inches rearward from their present position. As the JPS bars
pulled riders forward, the footpegs seemed too far hack. Larger riders started
to hang their boots on the pegs by the heels. This, in turn, dropped the toes
down too far for brisk riding. In a series of corners the boots had to be pulled
hack on the pegs and up Out of the way.

Big feet combined with the gearshift lever to
create an awkWard situation for some riders in right-hand corners. With the JPS
clicked over hard to the right, the gearshift lever is so close to the pavement
that a big foot can't get under the lever to change up a gear. What's worse, you
could get a size-13 toe caught between the road and the lever, and that shocking
experience is guaranteed to widen your line through any righthander.

The Norton's hand controls remain as before: wing
switches for the high-low beam and the directional signals, and a half-turn
throttle which should be a quarter-turn one. As always, the clutch pull is
light, thanks to the diaphragm-spring clutch. And the Lockheed disc brake has a
firm, progressive feel at the lever which translates into a lot of stopping
power with the Dunlop TT 100 front tire. Two staffers complained that the front
brake lever started working too soon—the lever hadn't arced hack sufficiently
for some riders to get a grip strong enough for a tire-howling stop from high
speed. Big-handed staffers scarcely noticed the problem. Yet in this age of disc
brakes, there's little reason for brake levers to be positioned as far away from
the handgrip as the clutch lever, unless manufacturers find symmetry a
compelling argument.

Down in the foot department, the four-speed
Norton transmission, once loosened up, confirmed again the Norton gearbox
reputation. It's notchy enough so that you never have to struggle to find
neutral, but the lever never resists the foot. Its throw is both short and
positive. The Norton gear changer, like Italian ones, retains mechanical feel.
You know up-shifts and downshifts are mechanically actuated. But most Italian
bikes have longer throws than the Norton. Japanese changers have short throws;
though compared to the Norton. Japanese levers generally have a hydraulic feel.
In its first thousand miles, the Norton belied its reputation in one respect.
Thrashing the bike down a winding road, the gearbox would momentarily get lost
in the four-three downchange. The shift would go through, but it was still
disconcerting.

Our test machine was built before September 1,
1974, so right-side shifting was retained. In compliance with U.S. requirements,
machines built after September I. 1974 for sale in the United States must have
left-side shifting and right-side braking. We hope the Norton gearbox loses none
of its shifting feel and crispness in the changeover.

The rear brake has little to lose in the change.
Thanks to- the leverages, there's not much braking force available at your left
foot. Enough perhaps to keep the bike steady, but that's about all. Shoes and
boots kept knocking the lead wires out of the stoplight switch terminals. The
footwear would scuff on the exposed switch, and this, together with engine
vibration, was enough to disconnect the leads. JPS owners should wrap the switch
securely in black electrical tape.

The Cycle staffers (and hangers-on) divided on
the Player's appearance. One allowed that the bike looked like a frog which had
been tire-creased on .a Texas highway. Others thought the JPS looked fabulous
from certain angles, but lumpy from others. Still others saw the JPS as a bold
departure from normal inbred Café-racer patterns. Everyone agreed that the JPS
was an eye-catcher—and an expensive one at that.

Whether a factory does the building, or some
small constructor or the individual enthusiast, specials by their nature are
expensive. The JPS wears a POE price of $2995. A standard Commando retails POE
for $2500. Some might consider building their own Norton Café-racer, those
enthusiasts can fashion a bike to their own individual tastes, though it's still
going to he expensive (these days alloy tanks cost $175 a copy). A lavish
project could swallow $500 easily.

What about other factory-built Café-racers? In
California the BMW R90S comes in at $3400-plus: Ducati Super Sports fetch $3500,
and that figure won't touch a Laverda 1000 ($3900). The Norton is a $400 notch
away from these heavy-spender specials, and that price differential is
significant. There are two clip-on sports bikes which share roughly the same
price slot as the John Player Special: the Ducati Sport ($2600) and the Moto
Guzzi 750 Sport ($2750). Both these machines represent more modern engineering
than the Norton. Nevertheless, outside the engine bays, neither Italian bike can
match the Norton network for parts and service. Here in the United States,
there's just a greater body of knowledge about Nortons, their care. tuning, and
idiosyncracies.

Remember that Cycle does not consider any Café
racer—British. Italian, German or whatever—a "best buy.- Even those who are
looking for purely good dollar buys should skip over Café racers, and leave the
clip-on runners to someone else. And leave the JPS for someone who knows how to
light off a cold 850 twin with one sure kick… who loves an interested and
appreciative audience… who complains about scraping pipes and stands with
transparent satisfaction… who points smugly to his feathered-in TT100s… who
believes that the Norton engine never gets old, just better… who doesn't give a
damn about little oil leaks… who will testify that brute horsepower alone makes
good brutes and poor motorcycles… and who looks at his JPS and sees Peter
Williams in full flight down Bray Hill On a fine June day in 1973.

Source Cycle 1974

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